Three had fallen back already, their engines burnt out in their redlined-till-they-died chase. Of the remainder that was still in the hunt, its pilots must have been having a tough time of it. Imagawa might have enjoyed thinking about the travails of their hunters, but she was too busy trying to survive her own high-g acceleration to take much pleasure in the suffering of others. Inertial compensators lessened the effects of high-g's - she and Percy themselves had been pulling a continuous twenty-three g's since they had turned and run. The compensators brought that down to a manageable. but still miserable, felt force of about four g's. The older tech aboard the pursuing fighters could only bring that down to somewhere around six. Six g's! Imagawa imagined the Memnonians going into cardiac arrest in their cockpits, or having brain aneurysms while they tried to get target locks on her and her wingman.
"They're in missile range, Witch. I'm detecting launches of short-range stuff." Percy notified. "Computer's identifying them as twenty Poison Darts."
"Makes sense. They're mainly flying Ajaxian fighters." Memnon had bought its fighters from a number of states, especially cheaper stuff from Ajax. "They probably threw in the missiles for free." The Poison Dart was a short-range, Ajaxian-manufactured anti-fighter missile to be used in close combat. They were simple things, low in onboard intellect but effective when employed in large numbers. An Ajaxian K-76 Drake could carry twelve of the missiles. They were launched in bunches. An opposing fighter might be able to evade one or two by skillful maneuvering, and one or another through electronic countermeasures. It was the fifth or sixth or seventh missile that would be the kill shot. There was only so much fancy maneuvering a fighter could do or electronic trickery it could perform before it found itself unable to evade any longer.
"We're just targets if we try to stay ahead of them," Percy said. "They'll take us down through sheer weight of numbers if we keep this up. We should make our stand here."
Percy was right. They were going to be overhauled soon. The more evasive maneuvers they made to try to escape the Poison Darts the more speed they would lose. Then the Memnonian fighters would be in gun range. There was only one option.
"You are to go on without me, Hammer," Imagawa ordered. "I will hold them up. Take as many of them with me as I can. That should give you enough time to . . . "
"Pardon the interruption, Witch, but we both know there is no chance of that happening," Percy said. "We will both turn and fight."
Imagawa could almost see him shrugging in the cockpit of his Wildcat, which was separated from hers by just fifty meters. "After all," Percy said, "we both knew we weren't getting out of this one."
"Then fight we shall, Hammer. Fight we shall." Imagawa checked her scope. There were twenty-one machines still in the hunt. "We will have to use our power to blow by them, strafing them as we go. We can't get into a turning match with them."
"Wouldn't consider it," Percy said. "We should stay close so that they can't target us without worrying about getting in each other's way, or friendly fire."
"They'll try and be careful, I expect. We trained a lot of them," Imagawa noted sourly. "They'll fight like us." There was a long pause. Then she waggled the wings of her Wildcat. "I've just sent a message to Steadfast not to expect us for dinner. The chow on that ship was never good anyway."
"The cryochambers smelled funny too," Percy said.
"Let's do this."
The two Wildcats turned sharply upward, their strong gravitic brakes draining velocity in the formerly forward direction, and headed straight back in the direction they had come, just as the Poison Darts came within lethal range. The Halifaxian fighters tore through the void, the missiles struggling to maintain their target locks. Several of the simpleminded missiles, their targets having disappeared from view, snapped into scan mode, hunting for new targets. These scans came up empty, as the Wildcats had already looped back, running towards their pursuers. The Poison Darts, like most Ajaxian weaponry, were meant to be employed en masse, and possessed little in the way of sophistication. They continued their futile scans in the last confirmed heading of their now-vanished targets.
The Memnonian fighters, each of which had a much more sophisticated, and thus flexible, human brain in command of it, were quicker in assessing the unexpected turnabout by the Halifaxians. They began to decelerate hard, desperately trying to shed speed so that they did not overshoot their prey. This was more easily said than done. In their bid to catch up to the Wildcats, the Memnonians had floored their machines. The gravitic brakes on their fighters were strong enough under usual circumstances, but at this moment they were being called upon to slow a ten-metric-ton machine hurtling through the void. As the Halifaxian fighters began to close, several flipped their fighters over, and began a hard burn instead, hoping that their thrusters, now blowing in the opposite direction in which they had previously been moving, would be enough to prevent them from overshooting the Wildcats. Their instincts were correct. While a handful of the leading machines overshot the Halifaxian fighters, most were able to reduce their velocity sufficiently to stay ahead of them.
This also left them vulnerable. A fighter was optimized for combat to the fore of the craft, and each of the Memnonians was currently presenting its rear to Imagawa and Percy. At long range, the best weapons available were the twin M53A laser cannons mounted on each wing. These were the fastest, and the furthest ranged. Imagawa squeezed off several shots at the closest of the Memnonians, a pair of K-75 Serpents. Both fighters flared and exploded as the x-ray lasers torched their engines, exposing their plasma chambers to the cold vacuum of space. Percy brought down another two as he streaked over the Memnonian formation. As the range closed, Imagawa switched to her fuselage mounted gauss cannons. Though any object accelerated by the superconducting electromagnets in the gun would, in theory, continue on through space forever until captured by a gravity well stronger than its own velocity, the tungsten-cored, steel-sheathed rounds were typically used at shorter ranges. They were still a little too far away for the penetrators to be at their most effective.
"Switch to shot, Hammer," Imagawa called out to Percy. "We'll spank them for running so hot for so long after us."
"Got it, Witch."
Each Wildcat mounted two Sorensen-Horan GEM-71 30mm railcannons, one on either side the machine. In addition to ultrahigh velocity penetrators, the guns could select from a range of ammunition, depending upon what was most suitable under the circumstances. At longer ranges, even high velocity penetrators were relatively easy to evade. The Memnonian fighters, though now pointing their noses in the same direction as the Wildcats, were still traveling faster in the other direction, a consequence of having undertaken high-speed burns for so long.
"Let's leave them presents to remember us by," Imagawa snarked. "Grapeshot, against as many as we can."
Percy wondered briefly how the hundreds of steel balls inside the thirty-millimeter-diameter rounds they unleashed in a torrent had come to known as grapeshot. There was nothing sweet or succulent about the nasty little pellets. Each shell was programmed either to travel until its proximity-fuse detected a mass nearby, and then detonate, or it would streak out to a preselected point in space and explode into a shower of metallic death. The beauty of the weapon was that it could be used at range, and hit harder and more easily than lasers under the right conditions.
Those conditions were present now. Imagawa loosed a flurry of shells at the machines in front of her, repointing her Wildcat via tiny gravitic maneuver vane pulses so that her cannons could acquire a proper angle on several of the oncoming Memnonians, each in its turn. The shells erupted directly behind them, and the enemy fighters had no chance to escape as they slammed into the grapeshot, peppered by balls at a closing velocity of close to one-hundred thousand kilometers per hour. Those whose engines did not explode immediately were instead shredded by a hypersonic rain of steel, their pilots slain instantly and their gravitic maneuver vanes torn to pieces. Imagawa accounted for three Memnonian fighters in
this way, including a K-29 Black Dragon and two K-15 Pythons. Percy scored two more, rending a T-43C Barracuda in addition to a K-15.
"Good shooting," Percy hooted as his Wildcat shot past the stunned remnants of the Memnonian fighter group.
Imagawa was impressed. A surprise maneuver had backfooted their overeager hunters, giving them the chance to smack them hard. Within just a few minutes, the pair had smoked nine fighters. The edge they had gained, however, had come at a price. The Memnonians had not expected them to turn and fight. To do so was suicide, and with every passing second the Halifaxians were streaking away from their only way out of the Memnon system. The chase had cost the Memnonians dearly. Of their original thirty-two, just fifteen were left in the game. The odds had been lessened, but the Witch of Pella and her wingman Hammer were outnumbered fifteen to two, their missiles expended, and not many tricks left in their bags.
"We'll make them pay heavily for our lives," Imagawa snarled. "Ready for another go?"
"Always ready," Percy said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
RHS Steadfast, Memnon system
The holos of More's subordinate captains shimmered around him on the bridge of the Steadfast. Heyward, Calder, Carey, Rahal, Augustine, and his own executive officer, Vincent Vokey, now in temporary command of the Golden Lion, presented brave faces to their commanding officer. He admired their coolness under pressure. They were facing overwhelming odds, and still not one of them showed fear, or even anxiety.
"I won't try to make this any more palatable," More began. "We've never faced anything worse than this. Seventy-seven ships of all sizes, and our people are still trapped on Morrigan. They won't be coming back anytime soon. I have just received word from Lieutenant Darius Jenkins, my marine contingent commander. Morrigan is refusing to let them go, and is jamming our radio comms with him. He managed to send a laser transmission to us in battlecode by shooting it out a blastglass window. They're stuck there for the time being."
"Morrigan is shrewd," Carey observed. "It has surmised what we planned for it and taken hostages for its own protection.
"Morrigan anticipates that you will not try to destroy her while it has your people on board," Augustine said. "An astute judgment that bespeaks an intellect far superior to the shipbrains with which we are familiar. But the tactical picture has now changed. What has she said about the Memnonians? What is her attitude toward them?"
"I don't know," More said. "I am not sure she is aware that the RMN is present. Jenkins told me that they haven't had any communications with Morrigan since she shut them in. That was not too long after the RMN popped out of hyperspace. She may not have detected them."
"Morrigan does not seem to be all there," Heyward said. "The reports from my own people, from just before we lost contact with them, indicate a severely wounded shipbrain."
"She took a lot of damage in her last fight," Calder added, "and the Tartareans didn't help matters by cutting into her."
"Morrigan's a wild card," said Rahal. "We have no idea what she will do."
"There are two things keeping us in-system," Carey began. "We have personnel still aboard Morrigan, and our unwillingness to allow it to fall into Memnonian hands. Keeping Morrigan away from the RMN is the more important issue. I don't want to make light of any of you losing your people, but the deaths or capture of a few dozen personnel, while tragic, would not be a strategic catastrophe for the Republic. What we need to do is destroy Morrigan immediately. She has no shields and is vulnerable to nukes. Kestrel has been rigged for displacement for over an hour. So have your own ships. We could all get out of here fast if we take out Morrigan at once."
"I refuse to leave my people behind," Heyward protested. "If you want to run, do so. I think we should send another shuttle to retrieve them. A boarding party could cut its way into the ship and get them out."
"Morrigan has been dormant for a while," noted Augustine. "A small ship might be able to slip in undetected."
"I don't want to leave my people behind either," More said. "What if Morrigan wakes again and takes our boarding party captive? We'll have added to how many crew we will lose. Our larger problem is with the RMN. They will move against us soon. Admiral Wu wants Morrigan more than anything. He'd let us go if we agreed to displace out of the system and left her to him. That's out of the question." More settled unhappily into his chair. With the addition of the three shuttle pilots and the seven marines he had sent to Morrigan, there were fifty-one people stuck on the ship. Tommasina Carey was right. Their loss would be tragic, but not a stake in the heart of Halifax's strategic security. He'd ordered people to their deaths before. He'd never been the direct cause of them, however.
If there was one thing that had been drilled into him at Cold Bay, it was that his own life and those of his crew were irrelevant where the ultimate safety of the Republic was concerned. He had been given a commission on the understanding that he would die to defeat a serious threat to Halifax. There was only one choice to make.
"I want us to each launch six missiles at Morrigan," More ordered. "With her shields down, that will do it, and then some. Once we have confirmed that she is gone, we displace, Golden Lion first, and leave Memnon with some radioactive debris. Understood?"
The captains nodded their assent, and began to wink out, one by one, until, only Matt Heyward and Tyler Rahal were left. "I'm not happy about this," Heyward said.
"Neither am I, Matt. I can order you to do this with an official acknowledgement of your protest, if you prefer."
Heyward shook his head, which flickered in the dim light of Steadfast's bridge. "Not necessary," he said, closing his eyes. "This is not what I had hoped for."
"I didn't want this either."
"You have no other option," Rahal added quietly. "I would do the same if . . . standby Steadfast." Rahal disappeared from view briefly, and then reappeared. One of my Owls has just reported that the Royal Alfred has launched six assault boats. They are making a straight line for Morrigan."
"They plan to board her," More said.
"Do you think they know we still have people on her," Heyward asked.
"I can't be sure of what they know," More said. 'Wu knew a lot about the mines and Morrigan that surprised me."
"Six assault boats," Rahal said. "That will be about fifty of their huscarls. He's ready for a fight to take possession of the ship."
'I've only got seven of my marines over there," More said. "They'll fight like hell and be overcome by weight of numbers."
"And Morrigan will be Memnon's," answered Rahal. "It's a clever move by Wu. He isn't opening fire on us, but he is daring us to take a shot at his boarding parties. If we open fire, he'll claim that everything he did was in retaliation for our aggression."
"Damn! He's forcing my hand. We've got about five minutes before his boats reach Morrigan. It's time for us to take her out." More switched to the squadron-wide tacnet. "All ships. Prepare to launch your birds - three minutes."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Aboard the Morrigan
"At least we're safe here," Chandler reassured Venn and Howell. "It could be much worse."
"You mean worse than being trapped on this ship with the two of you?" Venn snarked. "I guess I have to count my blessings." She glanced about the bridge. Most of the wreckage had been cleared by the exploration teams, but the place had seen better days. "It's much roomier than what we'd find on one of our own battleships," she said. "I've been on the Republic. This is twice as big."
Chandler nodded. "They weren't as concerned with maximizing usage of interior volume. Not as much as we are. This ship was a whole lot more livable than any of ours."
Howell came and sat down beside them atop a fallen console. "It's good to see the two of you acting civilized with each other." He pointed to the front of the bridge, where a torn vidscreen hung blank and forlorn. "I wonder what her crew saw through that."
"It's hard to believe that Morrigan was ever at war," Venn said. "The ship, it doesn't
give off that pure military vibe. Not like the Steadfast does. I think she came from a better time."
"That could be almost any other era," Chandler chuckled. "I've felt it too. Morrigan is half-warship, half-research vessel."
Howell frowned. "The stories she could tell if she were all there! Why do you think the captain wiped her data banks before he abandoned her?"
Chandler shrugged. "I can only conjecture. A ship like Morrigan must have held a myriad of secrets that he didn't want to fall into enemy hands. Where they had been, where they were going, future plans of attack, maybe secret weapons too. Stuff that would have to be eliminated before the captain could leave her."
"He didn't destroy her, though, did he," Venn noted.
"No, he didn't," Chandler agreed, "and that is the mystery. The captain and the whole of the crew got off, wiped what they had to, and then left the ship alone, and still moderately functional. Captain Heyward says that there was a war of some sort, and that Morrigan was right in the thick of it. We don't know much more than that. Some of the personal writings of the captain and the crew make mention of it, but it's not as informative as you might like."
The Memnon Incident: Part 3 of 4 (A Serial Novel) Page 2
